


There and Now

by Scribe



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Jack and Torchwood Three during the Battle of Canary Wharf</p>
            </blockquote>





	There and Now

**Author's Note:**

> This was written Summer 2007, and so diverges from canon at that point. Thanks to ohbilleh for the beta!

Jack apparently has a phobia. The moment the first Dalek appeared on the viewscreen he had been seized by an awful, overwhelming terror, nauseous and shaking and unable to draw his next breath. He really shouldn't have been surprised. After all, phobias are caused by traumatic experiences and as trauma goes death is probably about as bad as you can get- at least the first time.

His heart is pounding with that same panic now as he steps onto the invisible lift in preparation for yet another rescue mission, but he's careful not to let it show. He'd had a hard enough time convincing his team to let him go in the first place.

"I've met Daleks before," he'd told them. "I know them. They won't hurt me." It was as good a lie as any; he wasn't about to explain the real reason why he was the only one who could safely go aboveground.

"What about the robots?" Tosh had demanded. "Do you know them too?"

"No. Still, one enemy's better than two. I'm the most likely to survive." He'd ended the conversation by walking away.

When Jack reaches the sidewalk the first thing he hears is someone screaming. At the beginning he wouldn't have even noticed. The whole world had been screaming and chaos. Now, though, everything is deserted but for the clang of metal feet in the distance. The only screams he's heard in a long while have been gruesomely short. This man, though- he's reasonably sure it's a man- isn't stopping. Jack glances around. There's no one in sight, human or alien. Steeling himself against the fear, he begins to run.

He finds the man two blocks away among the ruins of yet another building destroyed by the Daleks. His right leg is trapped to the thigh in rubble and he shows no sign of noticing Jack's presence. The screaming is going to be a problem. He kneels by the man's head and reaches around, trying to find the right spot.

"It's okay," he says quietly, pressing as hard as he dares. "I'll help you."

He can hear the steady stomping of approaching robots by the time the man finally goes limp. Jack slumps over him, hoping they'll both be left for dead. He's already been exterminated once today and the old ache in his chest flares with every breath.

Once the footsteps have receded he heaves the man out, trying not to look at the mangled leg, and lifts him up. The walk back seems never-ending. Jack's strong, but he was dead only a few hours ago and the man he's carrying is just about his size. At least the others are watching out for him; the invisible lift shudders beneath his feet before he has a chance to fumble for his wrist computer and he and his burden descend into the hub.

Torchwood Three resembles a refugee camp. At last count forty-six civilians, including nine kids, two toddlers and an infant, were huddled in the underground base. Most of them are on their cell phones, trying to reach friends and family and direct them to this one tiny island of safety. The whole situation sets Jack's teeth on edge. He's seen camps like this before and in his experience when the fright wears off people get selfish and violent and nasty. They haven't had a fight break out yet, but he's betting on the next hour or so. Besides, trapping a bunch of terrified people in a maze full of dangerous alien technology, not to mention the dinosaur, is just not a good idea. Sooner or later someone is going to touch something they shouldn't.

Even if no one gets hurt they still have a retconning nightmare on their hands. His best plan at the moment is to say there's some kind of lethal radiation from all the alien stuff lying around and give everyone a solution to drink to counteract it. Maybe he'll give his team a glass each before he says anything about it and tell them to drink it like it's an everyday thing. If he makes it look strange enough- yellow food coloring should do it- someone's bound to ask. Then they can explain about the supposed radiation and hopefully some smart civilian will demand that it be widely distributed. No one will refuse if they think it was their idea.

Of course, worrying about retcon is idiotically optimistic of him. He would remember if the Daleks ever conquered the earth, and they didn't. This means they're probably in the midst of one hell of a temporal paradox. If not, time will adjust itself to incorporate the total decimation of the human race at the start of the twenty-first century, which means that in a few minutes Jack's going to cease to have ever existed. Since he's not particularly eager for either of those fates, he's going to have to find some way to save the earth. (There is another possibility that also has to do with saving the earth but has nothing to do with Jack. It had come to him in the same breath as the fear when he'd seen the first Dalek and ever since then he's been trying to forget it. There have been too many false hopes.)

A startled murmur is going through the hub at the sight of him. By the time the lift reaches the floor a man is pushing toward him through the crowd.

"Let me see him," he says, reaching Jack's side. "I'm a doctor."

Jack recognizes the guy. He's short and slight, with a London accent that stands out against a background of Welsh. Jack had marked him down as a potential troublemaker that morning after being on the receiving end of his attitude for about fifteen seconds. Usually he would applaud confidence and the tendency to (loudly) mistrust authority. Not in a crisis situation. In a crisis you need cooperation- and split-second assessments of others, which may prove to be untrue.

"C'mon," he says, rethinking his evaluation of the doctor, and leads him over to the conference table where he lays the injured man. It's the only suitable surface he can think of. He's already firing off commands as he straightens.

"Suzie? You're in charge down here. Tosh, go get the med supplies." They have a good stash of bandages and antiseptic, at least. He really needs to hire on an actual doctor one of these days. "Pick someone to help him, if he wants. Then set up the CCTV in the tourist office and get anyone who wanders nearby in here. If there are Daleks or robots around, don't open the door. I don't care how many people are out there. If they find out where we're hiding this whole planet is toast. Got it?" Tosh nods and disappears.

Jack sighs, doing a once-over of the hub. Maybe he shouldn't have said that in front of all the refugees, but he doesn't really care. It's true. Torchwood is the earth's only hope and he's stuck down here, hands tied by having to monitor these forty-six- no, forty-seven people who might just be the only humans left in a few days' time.

He spares a glance to check on Suzie and decides that she'll manage just fine for a while. He's going to try getting in contact with Torchwood One one more time, although he doubts he'll have any luck. They've been giving him the cold shoulder even since he overstepped his boundaries a bit trying to convince them that the ghost shift was dangerous. If they won't talk to him now he's going to find a gun and go out there himself, to hell with his responsibilities. He's already doing a mental assessment of the available weaponry as he turns and goes upstairs.

The TARDIS is parked in the doorway of his office.

Jack freezes and then runs, leaps up the remaining stairs, slams the doors open and he's here, he's safe, they can't leave without at least answering his questions.

He's here, but they're not. The console room is exactly as he remembers, thrumming softly around him. One of Rose's jackets lies over the rail. He's reminded momentarily of the last time he was here, when they'd thought she was dead.

He searches through the empty rooms, elation giving way to worry as they fail to appear. If they'd come to Torchwood for him they would have been waiting in the console room. Is it possible the Doctor doesn't realize when and where they are? Is it a coincidence? If they came to fight the Daleks they're probably out there right now, armed with only the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's quick mind. How are the Daleks here, though? Did the Doctor somehow shift both his enemy and himself through time and space? That would explain their disappearance from the Game Station. Why bring them here and now, though, where there are billions of innocents for the Daleks to destroy? Does the Doctor expect Jack to have some kind of solution?

Mind racing, Jack forces himself to step back outside the TARDIS. Now that his entire attention isn't on its appearance he notices the other thing that's out of place- there's a man sitting at his desk. He's thin and seems tall, though it's hard to tell, with messy brown hair and a pinstriped suit. There's something strange about him- maybe the way he's staring straight ahead as though he doesn't even notice his surroundings. Jack leaves a few feet between them; there's no way to know if he's a friend or an enemy.

"Where's the Doctor?" The stranger raises his eyes, but makes no answer. He tries again. "Where's Rose?"

"Rose is gone." Enemy, then. He seems unarmed, but then again he also seems human. Jack's seen too much to assume.

"What do you mean, Rose is gone? What did you do to her?"

"I loved her," says the stranger in the same quiet monotone. Jack's blood runs cold. His mind is filled with images of Rose, captured, violated, killed. No, the Doctor would never let that happen. Which means he's either dead or imprisoned. Jack lets his hand stray to his gun- blatantly.

"Where is the Doctor?" he demands again.

"Here, Jack," says the stranger, standing up. Jack has the gun trained on him, safety off, before he's out of the chair. The stranger stops, then walks toward him very slowly, hands deliberately in view. Jack lets him approach. Even if he tries something Jack should be able to get a shot off, enough to keep him here until Jack comes back to life. He won't kill him (even though he wants to every time he thinks of the man touching Rose) because the information he can provide is Jack's only way to find the two of them.

The stranger reaches for his free hand, still moving slowly, eyes on Jack's face. He complies. He's expecting psychic contact, proof through replayed memory of what happened to them, but instead the stranger presses Jack's hand against his neck.

There's a very familiar double pulse beating under his fingers. His heart leaps. It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself, there are probably hundreds of species in the universe that have two hearts. As if reading his mind, the stranger says,

"You said you'd never doubt me."

"Doctor," Jack says, halfway between a question and a statement, trying it out.

"That's me," says the Doctor, with a fleeting half-smile.

He has a thousand questions. Why are you in this body? Can you defeat the Daleks? Why did you leave me on the Game Station? Why are you here? Can you fix me?

"What's going on?" he asks finally. "Where's Rose?"

"Rose is gone," the Doctor repeats. There is no sign of emotion in his face or his voice, but his grip tightens convulsively, digging Jacks' fingers into his neck. They stand in that strange tableau, hands clasped over the Doctor's hammering pulse, the gun still cocked between them, and Jack finally remembers the rest of the world.

"There are Daleks outside," he says slowly. It breaks the spell. The Doctor drops his hand, gaze going absent again, as though he's seeing something besides the walls of Jacks' office. There's a pause. Jack re-holsters his gun absently, waiting.

The Doctor's explanation, when it comes, is bleakly efficient. He states facts, listing the sequence of events that are occurring right now at Canary Wharf as if reciting a meaningless, memorized report. He mentions Daleks, Cybermen, people he saw die, people he killed himself. The only feeling comes when relates Rose's fate. The bitterness, the angry, patronizing scorn he exhibits for Torchwood One convinces Jack more strongly than anything that this truly is the same Doctor he traveled with.

"At least she's alive, though," he says, genuinely relieved. "Alive and safe."

"Alive and safe and in twenty-eight minutes' time trapped in an unfamiliar world with no way back because you humans can't resist playing with things you don't understand," spits the Doctor. "Is that really worth it? Worth dying and living again, and living and living until you'd give anything to make it stop? Watching all the suffering and the violence and everyone you know grow old? Estelle, thinking you're your own son? Because she's gone. I am too, at least the me you want. Rose and the Doctor, gone forever. You'll never see them again. Was that worth fighting for?" He snarls the last three words and then turns and storms into the TARDIS.

Jack stares after him for a long moment, speechless. Part of him is trying to assimilate the realization that the Doctor knows so much about him (knows he was alive at the Game Station, knows he can't die, knows and still didn't come). Mostly, though, he's taken aback by the Doctor's question- one that he still can't answer after all these years.

After a moment he shakes himself out of it and follows. The TARDIS is still there, at least, and the door is half-open. As he steps onto the ramp he catches sight of Rose's jacket again. An awful choking grief that's at least half anger rises in his throat. It's funny the way that history repeats, the way time goes in cycles and never cares about the bystanders, the inconsequentials, the innocents, the way the Doctor and the Daleks are locked in an epic battle throughout time and space and it's always someone else who loses.

There are cruel words on his tongue, demands and accusations, but they're forestalled by one quiet sentence. The Doctor is standing in the middle of the room with both hands gripping the edge of the console, shoulders hunched, staring unseeingly into the pale green light of the time rotor. Jack's fingernails have left vivid red marks on his neck. Later, when he knows this new Doctor, he'll understand better the import of what he's seeing. Even without any idea of the Doctor's normal behavior it's strange and frightening. Right now he is utterly still. Every movement- every breath- is slow and deliberate, as if he has to consciously force the motion to come. His few words are toneless and flat. He barely seems to notice his surroundings. It reminds Jack of the horrible blankness that had descended on the Doctor when they'd thought Rose was dead (and there are so many echoes of that day, always, they follow him throughout his life).

"You're the only one who remembers her," the Doctor says.

Finally, finally, understanding clicks into place. It's true; he's the only person in this universe that remembers Rose as the Doctor does. Not as a bleached-blond shop girl with a life going nowhere, but as part of a laughing, loving duo with all of time and space at their command.

"She was impossible to forget," says Jack. He walks hesitantly up the ramp, unsure of whether he's reading this correctly. "I don't think anyone who saw her could ever forget her. That explains the way she ended up getting carried off to either be eaten or married by every other alien we met, anyway. She was smart, though. Not the type to sit back and scream for help. She'd always be trying to fix everything and half the time she ended up saving the world in the bargain."

The Doctor doesn't turn or speak, but he moves one hand to cover Jack's on the console. It feels uncomfortably like yet another funeral. He regrets speaking as if she's died, but the two of them have been his past for so long that it hadn't occurred to him to use the present tense.

"She never got tired of it," he continues, knowing the Doctor can hear the unspoken comparison. "Even after everything she saw. She still stepped out into every new world expecting justice and beauty- and she found it, too, everywhere, despite all the hatred and the greed. She just...loved the universe." He pauses, weighs his chances, keeps going. "She loved you, too."

"Yes," says the Doctor. After a moment, he adds, "None of this would have happened if my people were still alive, you know. Travel through alternate universes used to be possible. Now we're all sealed off, separate and sterile, not a whisper between us.

The Doctor doesn't freeze, exactly, because he isn't moving. What Jack sees is the sudden tension in every line of his body, the adrenaline rush of balancing on the edge of a realization.

"A whisper," breathes the Doctor, and then whirls around in a burst of completely unexpected energy. "A whisper! Oh, that's _brilliant_!" He grins. It's the first time Jack has seen his new smile- wide and brilliant and joyful- and it just about breaks his heart.

The Doctor is racing around the console, pushing buttons and spinning dials, talking a mile a minute.

"There has to be a gap somewhere- just a small one, not to travel through, but so she can hear me. It would take a ridiculous amount of energy, of course, and I'll have to find a way to direct her to it, not that that should be a problem if I can find enough power to send a message in the first place. Maybe if I found a star..."

He stops, turning, serious once again. "You can't come with me, Jack. Not now. I've been keeping an eye on you, though, and-"

"Jack?"

It's Suzie. He can see her in his mind's eye, calling out as she climbs the stairs to his office. "Jack? We've got two more people..." She trails off. He imagines her catching sight of the TARDIS, hears her footsteps stop and the quiet rustle-click of her gun being drawn. "Tosh, get up here _now_," she murmurs, disturbingly intimate though Jack's headset. Shit.

"Jack, listen," the Doctor says, low and urgent. "There's something you still have to do here. It's why I haven't looked for you before this. Once it's over, though, I'll come back for you. I promise. I will come back."

Jack is mesmerized, caught in the Doctor's words and his earnest, unfamiliar eyes. It's almost impossible to tear himself away. He does, though, he turns and walks out of the TARDIS and into his office, where Suzie is standing with her gun pointed at his chest. He wonders briefly if she'd shoot him over the Doctor.

"What did you want to tell me?" He asks.

"Jack!"

"It's under control. Just follow my lead," he whispers, and then louder: "What did you have to say?"

"We've got two more people in off the street. That doctor wants to know if we have anything he can use as anesthetic. Tosh says we only have enough food to last until tomorrow," she reports mechanically, eyes fixed over his shoulder. He can hear the TARDIS dematerializing behind him and it takes all his willpower not to turn around.

"Good. Let's go get him some sedatives. Make sure it's the human ones, though." She makes a face at him, trying to communicate without being heard. "We can't stay in here, it's dangerous," he lies. "Trust me. There's no time to explain now, but give it about half an hour and everything will be fine. Now _move_."

He follows her back downstairs, fingers tightening around the bottle of retcon in his pocket. The universe certainly has a sense of irony. Someday he's going to pay for this, for all the little gaps in his employees' memories. One of these days someone's going to turn around and con _him_. Somehow, he can't really bring himself to care. It's just the life he leads, protecting the Doctor's secrets, and the future's, and his own, and waiting. He has more pressing things to worry about. Just now, he has forty-nine civilians to look after, a team to reassure, and a doctor to hire. And, somewhere out there, a future.


End file.
